Toward a Theory of Visual Rhetoric

What is required for an adequate theory of visual rhetoric?

I can't help feel like this is one of those questions that we're all trying desperately not to approach too directly. After all, how we define visual rhetoric is, as Logan stated, very contingent upon the way in which we define rhetoric. And to me, that seems to be one of the biggest challenges in developing any cohesive theory or framework. After all, how are we looking to define rhetoric? As a method of persuasion? A way of identifying/correcting misunderstandings? A way of reaching a common point of acceptance on a topic? Or as the kind of discourse that arises as a result of (and results in) rhetorical situations? At the same time, when thinking of rhetoric, is there an overt difference between written, aural, or visual rhetoric? 

Each form of rhetoric is dependent upon a communication of information between/among individuals, and when we do strive to make clear a point or engage a particular situation, rarely are we only relying upon a single faculty. I'm reminded of Fleckenstein's Embodied Literacies and the idea that words are images--or sound images that draw heavily upon our own embodied experiences and knowledges. I realize at this point that I'm seemingly dodging the question and dancing along the fine line of saying "There isn't a way of creating such a theory," but that's not my point or my perspective. I simply think that we're always in the dangerous position of narrowing our definitions to far or leaving them so expansive that they lose meaning or purpose. 

If we look at visual rhetoric as something which operates on a psychological level, then it really does extend somewhat beyond the simple level of the visual--of that which can be seen by the eyes--because it involves interpretation and meaning making in ways that include and expand beyond what is actually seen. The experience of seeing then becomes one of connecting and expanding contexts that cross the borders of the alphabetic, visual, aural, and tactile. So really, then, we're looking at isolating a larger part of rhetorical meaning when we seek to define a theory of visual rhetoric. Then, along with setting boundaries for visual rhetoric, we also need to allow the connections and bridges that connect it to rhetoric as a larger thing (with all its complexities). 

So we need to distinguish what visual rhetoric accomplishes--what it can do--something which our preliminary propositions have started. We need to account for the various ways in which visuals can present/shape meaning -- narrative, argumentation, identification. We also need to develop a critical set of terms which we can collaboratively define and accept (with room for modification and eventual revision, of course), so that we can use those terministic screens as a way of interrogating the work that visuals do.  And, to agree with Logan just once more, I think that the question of affordances and limitations are of particular interest, strictly because they would help to define the kind of work visuals do in connection with rhetoric as a larger process, allowing us better insight as to the way in which we make meaning from visuals and symbols. In this way, we might better understand the landscape of semiotic meanings that are available to deploy in a rhetorical situation and how those semiotic domains overlap and interact.